From Lynda Snider
Browntown
To the editor:
Veterans Day this year was sadly anticipated by my son and I because in June we lost our veteran due to heart failure connected to Agent Orange exposure. In his memory we donated a flag to the Village of Browntown to replace the tattered one flying at the Browntown Garden Path.
On the Saturday before Veterans Day, I drove past the Garden Path and saw the flag was gone. I made calls to people in the village who would know if it was taken down purposefully. No one knew anything but each person assured me they would do everything they could to help.
A theft report was filed at the Green County Sheriff's Department. The thought that our loved one's flag wouldn't be flying on Veterans Day angered us. Thankfully Helen Johnson, curator of the Browntown Museum, called to say she would make sure there was a flag flying on that pole on Veterans Day. And there was - even though the pole itself had been vandalized - again.
These vile acts of theft and vandalism were less painful because good folks in Browntown cared. So now will someone return our flag to the sheriff's department - no questions asked?
But wait - there is more to this story. Vandalism is defined as "the malicious and deliberate defacement or destruction of somebody else's property." Theft is "the act or crime of stealing somebody else's property." The increase in both vandalism and theft in our area is deplorable. I believe some parents have so detached themselves from what their children are doing that they don't ask or care about what the child has been doing while away from home. And I also believe some children have become so undisciplined that they believe they can do whatever they want without consequences. Accountability is non-existent in their world. This fact is substantiated by how few perpetrators are every caught, and how few victims ever receive restitution for their losses.
I don't have answers for how to end such deplorable acts. Hopefully someone reading this has suggestions and will share them. Unless you have been the victim of these mindless acts, you have no idea how it affects your faith in humanity.
Meantime I will continue to believe there are many more good parents and great kids in the world than rotten ones. Together we can weed out the bad.
Browntown
To the editor:
Veterans Day this year was sadly anticipated by my son and I because in June we lost our veteran due to heart failure connected to Agent Orange exposure. In his memory we donated a flag to the Village of Browntown to replace the tattered one flying at the Browntown Garden Path.
On the Saturday before Veterans Day, I drove past the Garden Path and saw the flag was gone. I made calls to people in the village who would know if it was taken down purposefully. No one knew anything but each person assured me they would do everything they could to help.
A theft report was filed at the Green County Sheriff's Department. The thought that our loved one's flag wouldn't be flying on Veterans Day angered us. Thankfully Helen Johnson, curator of the Browntown Museum, called to say she would make sure there was a flag flying on that pole on Veterans Day. And there was - even though the pole itself had been vandalized - again.
These vile acts of theft and vandalism were less painful because good folks in Browntown cared. So now will someone return our flag to the sheriff's department - no questions asked?
But wait - there is more to this story. Vandalism is defined as "the malicious and deliberate defacement or destruction of somebody else's property." Theft is "the act or crime of stealing somebody else's property." The increase in both vandalism and theft in our area is deplorable. I believe some parents have so detached themselves from what their children are doing that they don't ask or care about what the child has been doing while away from home. And I also believe some children have become so undisciplined that they believe they can do whatever they want without consequences. Accountability is non-existent in their world. This fact is substantiated by how few perpetrators are every caught, and how few victims ever receive restitution for their losses.
I don't have answers for how to end such deplorable acts. Hopefully someone reading this has suggestions and will share them. Unless you have been the victim of these mindless acts, you have no idea how it affects your faith in humanity.
Meantime I will continue to believe there are many more good parents and great kids in the world than rotten ones. Together we can weed out the bad.
